Designed to Become Engineer
I like to joke that I was "designed" to become an engineer before I was even born. My dad is a professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and about 70% of my extended family works in some branch of engineering. Growing up, though, I hated studying — I'd rather lose an entire day to Minecraft. It got bad enough that my mom eventually confiscated every device I owned. The only way to get them back was a deal: make it to the final round of a math competition, and I could play again. I made the final round. I went straight back to playing Minecraft all day. Eventually, my mom just gave up.
From Interstellar to Deep-Love
My path to aerospace actually started with Ant-Man. I joined my older brother for a movie one afternoon and got hooked — not on the superhero part, but on the quantum physics behind shrinking something down to ant-sized. That curiosity sent me down a rabbit hole of simple physics theories. Then, one day, I watched Interstellar, and that was it. I fell completely in love with aerospace and decided I wanted to be just as sharp as Murph, Cooper's daughter. Astronautics has felt like the obvious path ever since.
The Future Goal(s)
These days, I'm fully set on pursuing aerospace engineering on the astronautics track. I'm especially drawn to trajectory optimization — using machine learning and Koopman operator methods to help spacecraft navigate more efficiently and adapt to changing conditions in flight. I'm still mapping out exactly where this will lead, but cislunar mission design, and the intersection of data-driven methods with orbital mechanics, feel like the right direction to chase.